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On The Durability Of Usability Guidelines

Posted by timothy on from the buggy-whip-orange-by-default dept.

Ant writes "Useit.com's Durability of Usability Guidelines article says about 90% of usability guidelines from 1986 are still valid. However, several guidelines are less important because they relate to design elements that are rarely used today... The 944 guidelines related to military command and control systems built in the 1970s and early 1980s; most used mainframe technology. You might think that these old findings would be completely irrelevant to today's user interface designers. If so, you'd be wrong."

2 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. WILI v KISS by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Insightful


    I studied Useability at University in the late 80s/early 90s. One of the key elements was the on-going battle between WILI and KISS.

    WILI means "Well I Like It" and is normally for those interfaces designed, built and initially used by one person or group.

    KISS means "Keep It Simple Stupid"

    There are many other rules, reachability etc but under-pinning them all is the concept that WILI is bad and KISS is good.

    The Web was a whole bunch of WILIes ignoring 30 years of interface design. I'm not stunned at all that lessons from 20 years ago are still valid, because people are still the same and interactivity is still the same. Mainframes are very similar to the web as it tends to be a modal interaction model (click......wait......read.....click.... etc etc etc) there are some different concepts when elements are being dynamically updated and adjusting based on context and input. Most of that research is 20+ years old as well though.

    WILI v KISS, its the battle of "art" v "HCI". HCI is a discipline that takes in ergonomics, psychology and computing, and produces the best engineering. "art" or "creative interfaces" are the equivalent of a chocolate teapot, it doesn't matter if you like it... its still rubbish.

    The best interface is the one you don't notice, it just does its job and enables you to get on.

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  2. Does anyone actually care about usability anymore? by daveho · · Score: 5, Insightful
    IMHO, software has gotten significantly less usable in the 15 or so years that I have been using computers on a regular basis. Several examples of this trend:
    • Skins. Goodbye consistency. I blame Winamp for this, although Windows Media Player has taken the problem to dizzying new heights.
    • Software that tries to outguess the user. E.g., menu items that aren't shown by default, because you "probably don't need to use them".
    • Feature bloat. Firefox is the only mainstream application I can think of that actually removed features from an application in order to improve usability. Bravo.